This invention concerns a module for routing optical signals and a system and node comprising these modules. The invention has particular, but not exclusive, application to a module, system and node for routing optical signals that avoids the need for synchronisation and scheduling of optical packets of the optical signals.
Metro Ethernet and optical access networks are packet switched networks, allowing the multiplexing of traffic of several users, without preliminary resource allocation in the system. In these networks, although the transmission is optical, routing of the packets is carried out by electronic switches which require optical-to-electrical conversion of the optical signal. These switches form a bottleneck in the network.
It is desirable to provide optical routing of packets to remove the bottleneck. However, in order to avoid packet contention and packet loss, classical electrical switching solutions use input and output buffers and schedulers. Optical buffers and schedulers are difficult to realise because of the limited processing capability of optical components and lack of optical random access memory.